Up to 30% off Brilliant Classics

The only Schutz Edition on the market. Heinrich Schütz was one of the most important and influential composers of the 17-th century.

Drawing on the various musical sources of his homeland Germany and of Italy, where he made a prolonged stay, he integrated the contrapuntal (German) and melodious (Italian) influences into a rich and highly complex personal style, which paved the way for the great Johann Sebastian Bach.

Many works on this edition have excellent reviews available. Historically informed performances by the Italian Cappella Augustana, directed by Matteo Messori, based on extensive research of the musical sources. Comprehensive liner notes written by early music specialists. A well deserved tribute to the wonderful and moving music of Heinrich Schütz, still too little known to present day audiences.

Recording made in 2003.

Capella Augustana is recording the complete works of Schütz for Brilliant Classics, which will consist of 30 CDs.

Comprehensive booklet essay and sung texts.

Heinrich Schütz lived a long and successful life, and studied with some of the greatest masters of the time, including Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli. He is generally considered to be the greatest German composer of the early Baroque. Travelling between positions in Copenhagen, Kassel and Dresden, his life was hit by personal tragedies – he outlived his wife and all his children, and the Thirty Years War severely disrupted his employment. This CD contains selections from two of his three sets of Symphoniae Sacrae. The first set, composed in 1629, uses Latin texts, whilst the second and third sets are set to German texts. Schütz’s genius lay in his ability to set words to music. The rhythmic strength of his music lies in his ability to capture the nuances of the words, and this skill enabled him to make a major contribution to Luther’s aim of establishing the vernacular as the literary and liturgical language of the Protestant religion. A similar move had been made in England with the adoption of English rather than Latin in sacred music with the introduction of The Book of Common Prayer in the mid-16th century.

15 CD + CD ROM.

A stunning 15 CD collection of some of the greatest sacred music ever written.

From the great Lamentations of Byrd, Tallis and Palestrina, the listener is taken on a remarkable spiritual journey through Bach’s great St Matthew Passion, Purcell’s moving and bleak funeral music for Queen Mary, and Handel radiant Messiah.

Pergolesi’s masterful setting of the Stabat Mater and Telemann’s Passions-Oratorium are also to be found here, along with Haydn’s Stabat Mater and his dark and intense masterpiece Die sieben letzen Worte, or The Seven Last Words of our Saviour from the Cross.

Finally, Allegri’s hauntingly beautiful Miserere opens this collection – a work that was copied from memory after one hearing by the child Mozart. Prior to that moment the work had only been heard in the Vatican.

Superb value with a CD-ROM containing a full tracklist, sung texts and translations and booklet notes.

First rate performances from leading choirs including Kings College and Clare College, Cambridge, and the Stuttgart Chamber Chorus.

All recordings are recent.